It’s easy to predict which songs will receive the most attention on If I Could Only Fly, the new Merle Haggard album being distributed by the indie-punk label Epitaph. In the manner of the black-and-white, wrinkle-centric photo that introduces the album (à la Johnny Cash at American), it’ll be the…
These are some of John Lee Hooker’s earliest recordings, probably his second recording session ever, but one can never be sure given the numerous labels he recorded for early in his career. This is certainly the first time that all twenty of his recordings for the Savoy label have been…
When Fito Paez arrived in the United States for the first time in 1989, the police at the airport gave him a thorough workover. “I didn’t have the right look to get in,” remembers the gangly, long-haired singer currently in Miami to record a new disc. Laughing, he adds, “I…
Don Henley’s massive 1989 hit “The End of the Innocence” was a complex piece of songcraft that reminds me of the kind of portraiture that Paul Simon writes on a good day. Paced at a crawl, with co-writer Bruce Hornsby’s immediately recognizable keyboards underpinning the melancholy sentiment of the lyric,…
The cynic won’t care, the skeptic won’t understand, and the true believer will be overwhelmed: Nearly 30 years to the day of Jimi Hendrix’s death, here come 56 more unreleased-unavailable-unattainable tracks from a man more prolific in death than in life. Three studio albums before his death, three hundred or…
After a decade knocking around in relative anonymity with the indie in-crowd, Stephin Merritt lately has joined the ranks of pop music’s who’s who. The superlatives garnered by his band the Magnetic Fields’ one-of-a-kind, three-CD musical revue 69 Love Songs have turned him into something of an alterna-celebrity. For his…
Andre Williams began his musical career as a novelty-tune R&B crooner in Detroit during the Fifties, penning and singing songs such as “Bacon Fat,” “Jail Bait,” and “The Greasy Chicken.” He went on to more songwriting and producing, working for Berry Gordy at Motown during its heyday, but a fondness…
Launching the first annual Latin Grammys at the Staples Center in Los Angeles on September 13, the Latin Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (LARAS) took no risks. Instead the first-ever predominantly Spanish-language broadcast on a major U.S. television network tailored Latin sounds to prevailing U.S. pop tastes. Nothing ventured;…
It’s no longer news to hear the British are coming. It should, however, give pause to American acts to learn that once again those dastardly redcoats have found a way to hand us our lunch on an old-time rock and roll commemorative platter. We may not think much of our…
The variety of blues lined up for this year’s B.B. King Blues and Barbecue Festival makes for an exciting bill. Susan Tedeschi opens the show as an up-and-coming, third-generation blues singer and guitarist from Boston, Massachusetts, about as far out of the Mississippi Delta as she could hail. Yet with…
Just ten years ago, riding the leading edge of world beat was a gaggle of guys in fezzes claiming the last name of Mustapha. The 3 Mustaphas 3 deadpanned that they came to London from the Balkan town of Szegerely by smuggling themselves inside a shipment of refrigerators. They celebrated…
This is the fifth release on Sonic Youth’s self-released label, but it also is one of the few on SYR that is not exclusively by the band itself. A collaboration between Youth bassist/vocalist Kim Gordon, “downtown turntable artiste” DJ Olive, and drum programmer Ikue Mori (former drummer for the No-Wave…
Luis Enrique, one of the most important figures in the late-Eighties romantic salsa movement, is a familiar face on the Miami club scene. The Nicaraguan native, who emigrated to California in the midst of the 1978 Sandinista revolution, has been playing all over town since first following the rhythms of…
Ani DiFranco exists on an entirely other level. She may walk and talk like a regular human being, but she’s different. She does things most of us dream about. And it’s not just the successful performer end of things. She’s turned down every invitation to the corporate picnic and managed…
Deceptively simple, inherently romantic, and by its very nature obsessed with the past, power pop is a hard thing for most artists to get right. Maybe that’s because the people who helped create it — Buddy Holly, Phil Spector, the Beatles, Brian Wilson — were so damn good at it…
He’s the son of Richard and Linda Thompson — hence the no-shit CD review, because Teddy is the heir to more than three decades’ worth of giddy accolades and piss-poor sales — and dear ol’ dad shows up on five of the debut’s ten sing-alongs. But 24-year-old Teddy, who lacks…
His full-time band the Mekons haven’t made a decent album in damn near a decade, but Jon Langford’s punked-out country group the Waco Brothers have been on a hellacious hot streak since their 1995 debut. Inevitably tagged in the rock press as a honky-tonk Clash, the Wacos actually are a…
As a lapsed Catholic and devout agnostic, I have a deep-seated aversion to anything resembling ritual. If I notice a pattern emerging, I try to curb it before it becomes routine. Now the eating, sleeping, breathing thing is inescapable and there are always favorite restaurants to return to. But the…
Having sold more than 16 million CDs within weeks of her second release, Britney Spears is on top of the world right now. Which means chances are you love her or hate her. If you love her, you most likely are part of the nine-to-fourteen-year-old “tween” music market that, coupled…
It’s midmorning and guitarist Charlie Hunter sounds surprised as he picks up the phone and cuts off his answering machine, which beat him to the punch. “I didn’t even hear the phone ring; I’m going to have to fire my phone,” he says with a laugh from his Brooklyn apartment…
In honor of his roots in the Missouri Ozarks, Porter Wagoner is known as the Thin Man from West Plains, but just The Man would be sufficient. Country music simply would not be what it is today if it were not for Porter the TV host, the talent scout (He…
Professional geezer, Woody Guthrie imitator, and cowboy song collector Ramblin’ Jack Elliott celebrates the release of his biopic documentary, The Ballad of Ramblin’ Jack, with an accompanying soundtrack that serves as an adequate career summary for the wandering troubadour. It’s a testament to Elliott’s persistence in plugging away at his…
